“Neither. Disappeared without any notice. I came in late one day, he was supposed to’ve opened up, but no, the place was still locked up tight. And not a word from him since.”
“When was that?”
“About three weeks ago,” Waymark said. “I was thinking about letting him go anyway. He knew cameras but he didn’t know how to deal with people. Get irritated, snap at customers for no reason. But I didn’t take him for a thief.”
“He steal something from you?”
“I think so, but I can’t be sure. I’ve been around to where he lives half a dozen times, but he’s never there. Left town, for all I know.”
“Money?”
“No, a digital camera. Kodak EasyShare. I don’t know why Tucker would’ve taken it, unless it’s because it has the look and feel of an old-fashioned single-lens reflex camera like his old Nikkormat; there are a lot more expensive digitals in the shop. But the Kodak’s gone and if I was a hundred percent sure he stole it, I’d’ve called the cops on him. Maybe I will anyway.”
“Don’t bother,” Runyon said. “He’s in a lot more trouble than you can make for him.”
T he first mailbox in the bank at 2309 Crinella bore a label that read: Apt. 1-J. Morales, Mgr. Runyon found Number 1 and rang the bell. Ten seconds later he was facing a young Latina with a squalling baby slung over one meaty shoulder. Child voices and spicy cooking odors dribbled out from the clutter behind her.
“Yes?”
“I’m looking for one of your tenants. Tucker Devries, apartment eleven.”
“Oh, him,” she said. Another one with scorn in her voice. “The photographer.”
“Seen him lately, say in the past week?”
“No. His rent’s overdue.”
Runyon flashed his license, handed her a business card; she looked at both with no expression, held the card between thumb and forefinger as if it were something dead and not very interesting.
“It’s important that I find Devries,” he said. “Very important.”
“What’d he do?”
“Hurt some people. Might be something in his unit that’ll help me find him.”
Blank look while she rocked and patted the baby. It went right on squalling.
“It’s worth twenty dollars to me to have a look,” he said.
“Uh-uh. My husband, he wouldn’t like it.”
“Thirty dollars.”
The dark eyes showed interest for the first time. “ How much?”
“Forty. Best offer.”
“Well, you know, I can’t leave my kids alone here.”
“Forty dollars for a twenty-minute loan of your passkey.”
“Yeah? How do I know you’ll bring it back?”
“You saw my license and you have my card.”
She wrestled with her greed for maybe thirty seconds, just about as long as it took the baby to stop crying and let loose a loud belch. Then she said, “Just a minute,” and retreated inside and shut the door. Two minutes and the door opened again. In place of the infant she held a key on a tarnished brass loop.
“Forty dollars,” she said.
He gave her two twenties and she relinquished the key.
“You better bring it back,” she said. “And you better not steal anything or I’ll call the cops on you.”
Runyon made his way to Number 11, let himself in. Faint musty odor; nobody there for several days. He found a light switch. Room about the size of one in a downscale motel. Clean, tidy. Cheap furniture, nondescript, the kind you find in those same downscale motel rooms. The only stamps of individuality were on the walls-hundreds of photographs in orderly rows from near the floor to as high as a six-foot-tall man could reach. Mostly five by seven, some eight by ten.
He spent a couple of minutes scanning them. People, places, animals; fences, graffitied walls, junk cars. No rhyme or reason to any of them, except for two short rows on the back wall near the kitchenette. These were all eight-by-tens and displayed in the best location for viewing. And all depicted women-young, middle-aged, old-in various states of nudity, taken through bathroom and bedroom windows. Tucker Devries, the photographic Peeping Tom.
Nothing else in the living room. In the kitchenette Runyon opened the refrigerator. Half-full quart of milk nearly a week past its sell-by date. Eggs, packaged cheese left open so the ends were curled up hard, cold cuts, part of a loaf of sliced bread that was stiff to the touch and smelled stale.
The bathroom was outfitted as a dark room, the equipment neatly arranged on the cheap vanity sink, a red safe light in place of the bulb over the sink. He examined the bottles. Developing solution, fixer, stop bath. And one that didn’t have anything to do with processing pictures.
Hydrochloric acid.
Tucker Devries was the perp, all right.
The only other room was a small bedroom. More cheap furniture in there. The nightstand, the bureau drawers, held nothing of interest. The closet was too small for more than a few items of clothing on hangers, a suitcase, a couple of cardboard cartons. No sign of the inherited trunk. Devries had either stored it or gotten rid of it.
Runyon sifted through the contents of the two cartons. One held photographs, bundled together and fastened with rubber bands. Discards, probably, ones Devries didn’t deem worthy of display. The other contained his mother’s belongings, some or all of what he’d decided to keep.
Letters. Wedding portrait of an attractive blond woman and a bushy-haired man, both in their late teens-Anthony and Jenny Noakes. Divorce papers. Baby pictures, and snapshots of a boy from toddler to about age seven. Locks of dark blond hair and other small keepsakes. A woman’s hat made out of some kind of soft animal fur. Odds and ends that meant nothing to Runyon.
He thumbed through the letters. From Aunt Pauline and a friend in Ukiah named Darlene, mostly. A couple from men, short and suggestive of sexual relationships; none of the names was familiar. Nothing bearing Lloyd Henderson’s name, but two notes in a man’s hand and signed with the initial L. One: Can’t wait to see you again. I’ll be at the camp alone next weekend. See you then. Love. The other: Meet me tonight usual place. I want you so much! Both notes written on what looked like letterhead stationery with the heads cut off. No dates on either.
Nothing there to indicate motive. Had Devries found something else in the trunk, more notes, maybe, that he’d kept with him or destroyed?
The twenty minutes were almost up. Quick looks through drawers in the kitchenette and the end table in the living room, and among a neat stack of papers and photography magazines on the coffee table, produced zip. There wasn’t anything in the apartment to indicate where Devries might be holing up.
Runyon locked up, walked down and returned the passkey to Mrs. Morales. “If you see Devries in the next day or two,” he said, “give me a call at either of the numbers on my card. It’s worth another twenty dollars to me.”
“Sure, why not.”
“And if he does show, don’t say anything about my being here looking for him.”
“You think I’m crazy?” She surprised him with a conspiratorial wink. “I ain’t even gonna tell my husband about the forty dollars.”
I n the car he sat for a time with his hands on the steering wheel, trying to figure his next move.
Los Alegres. Sure, that much was clear. If Devries wasn’t here, hadn’t been here in a week or more, then that was where he was. But the problem was still the same one they’d faced all along.
How to find him.
19
I stayed away from the agency on Thursday morning, with the intention of doing the same in the afternoon. After yesterday’s horror show I figured I was entitled. Write out my witnesss statement and drop it off at the Hall of Justice later on. Putter a little, read a little, catch up on cataloging my pulp collection. Quiet, relaxing day.
Yeah, sure. I should’ve known better.
I forgot about that insidious invention, the telephone. Silly me. If my brain had been functioning properly, I would have turned off the cell, unplugged the house phone, and drowned the answering machine in the bathtub.